Why is Perfect Days a perfect movie

How would we imagine our Perfect Days? Certainly, not by spending most of our time cleaning public bathrooms in a neighbourhood in Tokyo. As a matter of fact, Hirayama's life is exactly one we wouldn't expect to see at the centre of a movie nominated at the Academy Awards in the Best International Feature category, representing Japan. At first conceived as a documentary supposed to promote the construction and spread of new public toilets, with Wenders being explicitly asked to direct, it was made into a movie. Hirayama, around whom the whole story revolves, is a cleaner for the Tokyo Toilet: as the website of the Tokyo Toilet Project states, these are "public toilets like you have never seen", and this we can believe! The movie brings indeed perfect justice to what the Japanese call "the symbol of Japan's world-renowned hospitality culture". It follows a circular structure revolving, as we have previously stated, around Hirayama's life, a man who is apparently invisible at the eyes of the multitude, since many will not admit it, but we rarely ask ourselves anything about who cleans public toilets. He wakes up every morning and follows the same routine over and over: he gets up and remakes the bed, he waters his tree seedlings, washes himself and before heading out, he takes his keys, his watch, him camera, his phone, and some coins to get coffee from a vending-machine he has in his courtyard, all of this in the same, meticulous chronological order.

Central themes appear to be isolation and solitude not in a conventional, negative way, but as the representation of independence and contentment: Hirayama lives for himself, taking care of his body and soul, keeping his mind alive through his readings, and finding joy in his respectful bond with nature. He talks little, only when extremely necessary, and when he does, he is never engaged in long conversations, alimenting the vagueness and ambiguity that characterises the entire movie as Wenders wanted it. It seems like a silent movie, where messages are mainly conveyed through body language, and eyes: we are completely soaked into the pacific dimension he lives in, coming out of the theatre feeling a change has occurred within ourselves.

Another theme that emerges is nostalgia, and the one we see portrayed in the movie is nothing but Wenders'! This melancholy seems to represent everything that today's society has lost. We lack, for instance, a real connection with nature, extremely important in Hirayama's life; in fact, the first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is take care of his plants. However, what I find truly emblematic of his bond with nature is when, during his lunch break from work, he looks around, taking pictures of treetops, always facing directly what surrounds him, never through his camera. Nostalgia could also be found in Wenders' music choice, not only for the selection of songs that form the soundtrack of the movie, but in particular because of his decision to make Hirayama use music tapes, that are now extremely rare. We could also find traces of Wenders' nostalgia for the dedication that new generations have a hard time putting into their jobs. This is perfectly represented through the generational gap embodied in the relationship between Hirayama and Takashi, his young co-worker, who does not take his job seriously: in fact, it won't be long before he quits.

The entire movie is filled with ambiguity and mistery, where many details, especially about Hirayama's life before becoming a cleaner for the Tokyo Toilet, are left unsaid. We know nothing of his past and we are not interested in knowing, we don't ask ourselves too many questions because we are captured from the contagious routine that depicts this man's life and celebrates the Japanese culture. His life seems to revolve around the same actions during the entire movie, but if we pay attention to the ending we are able to see that something within himself has changed: he doesn't seem so composed anymore, and as the movie proceeds, we feel caught in Hirayama's emotions that become more and more vivid. He is not as distant as he seemed to be at the beginning: he is a man like any other. And this aspect brings out another important celebration: the one of life. Because this movie, above all, is a celebration of life in its smallest, apparently most insignificant manifestations. We are surrounded by nature and people with so many stories we know nothing about, by literature, art, and incredible music, and yet we spend most of our time on our phones, or watching tv, forgetting to interact with what life offers us, and most importantly, with ourselves. Wenders tells us we have stopped living presenting a movie that celebrates life, through a protagonist who knows how to live! Something many of us don't know how to do anymore.

Furthermore, it is a movie that celebrates the present, through a character who has chosen to move forawad. In fact, what we know about Hirayama's past is only that he did not have a good relationship with his father, and, despite all of this, he chose to lead an isolateed and independent life moving on from what hurt him. In a reality that is anchored to the past, Wenders comes back with a movie that celebrates our present, hic et nunc, where the past doesn't have any relevance, while what really matters is the dedication to the now, to one's job, self-care, always honoring the semplicity of the little things. Wenders is telling us to acknowledge that we have stopped living, only because this is the one way to start living again.